eli5: Why does the US Military have airplanes in multiple branches (Navy, Marines etc) as opposed to having all flight operations handled by the Air Force exclusively?
In: Other
The different services don’t trust each other to provide what they need.
in the 1920s the Royal Air Force took control of naval aviation and starved it of assets so badly that the primary strike aircraft for the Royal Navy’s carriers at the beginning of WW2 was a slow biplane. The Navy eventually got control of their aircraft.
Then the RAF did it again in the 1990s and screwed the Navy again by taking control of all Harriers and then F35s under Joint Force Harrier where they did everything possible to cut the Navy out of control of their own fixed wing assets.
So yeah, it’s hard to blame the other services for wanting their own aircraft that aren’t under USAF control having seen that.
Latest Answers